A black conservative's place for independent thinking and common sense -- A little oasis for those who got caught up in the momentum of the civil rights movement, but failed to discern the false from the true

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The term "social engineering" never fit an entity better than it does the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This intrusive, tenacious organization has spent years attempting to recast and transform American society to fit its own peculiar ideals. Its directors are missionaries in the full sense of the word, in that they relentlessly work to stamp onto the hearts and minds of the public a distinctive belief system, which teaches what is evil and what is not. This month, the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) has published an excellent analysis of the SPLC's attack on FAIR and other immigration reform groups, entitled, Guide to Understanding the Tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Immigration Debate." It offers much-needed insights. Besides giving the ordinary citizen an opportunity to view the insides of this "watchdog" group, the report should become a reference guide for members of the media, who generally take the easy way out when covering stories about race and/or immigration.

Reporters, editorialists, and feature writers are notorious for accepting, without further investigation, reams of data and materials disseminated to them by a cluster of self-appointed overseers of American society, among the most prominent, the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Thanks to the fawning acceptance granted them by the establishment media, these groups, and several more like them, have acquired an almost quasi-governmental status in the public mind. When they spread lies, there are few people who will risk inevitable public denigration and stand up to challenge them. In regard to the SPLC, FAIR's new report does just that.

FAIR was founded in 1979, and is the country’s largest immigration reform group. It has more than 250,000 members whose aims are to improve border security, stop illegal immigration, and promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest. Sensible immigration reform would enhance national security, improve the economy, preserve our environment, and protect jobs for American citizens.

Such goals have earned FAIR the designation of a "hate" group by the SPLC. Other immigration reform organizations also have incurred the wrath of the SPLC. They include, but are not limited to the two next largest groups, i.e., the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Numbers USA. These groups are reputable organizations that handle in a respectful manner what has become a volatile subject. Yet, the SPLC makes it clear that any individual or group that emphasizes the need for immigration reform of any kind is a "hater" and, hence, an enemy of American society.

Although the SPLC claims to take no position on immigration policy, for more than a decade it has acted as a bully by attacking citizens who even suggest that our borders should be monitored, or that the immigration population should be limited. According to the FAIR guide, "In countless articles and 'investigative reports,' the SPLC concluded that just about everyone actively opposed to amnesty and mass immigration was a 'nativist' a 'white supremacist,' or had ties to such groups and individuals."

The SPLC is well known for its ever-growing list of "hate groups" and individual "haters," often referred to as the SPLC's "hit list." Lacking an objective criteria for what constitutes "hate," the SPLC uses its own inscrutable standards. There are some hints, however, that point to a consistency in its multicultural emphasis. Not satisfied with customary, voluntary activity between races, its directors give the impression that they would like to engineer more aggressive policies, in order to bring about greater racial interaction.

In the SPLC's universe, race and how one deals with it, is an important component in determining who is good and who is bad. In order to put the full kibosh on perceived enemies, the SPLC will slap the "racist" tag on them, just for good measure. This was never clearer than in the case of the Mormon polygamous sect in Eldorado, Texas, where, last year, over 400 children were temporarily kidnapped by the government and removed from their parents. With all the troubles faced by these people in just trying to navigate around the intrusions by outsiders, while coping with a system they did not understand, the SPLC came along and declared the group "racist."

In trying to figure out the SPLC's bizarre intervention in this case, one might wonder if the charge of racism was based on the early history of the Mormon church (the sect still adheres to the church's early beliefs on race) or, given the SPLC's propensity for racial meddling, was the charge based on the fact that the men in this sect apparently had no colored wives? Might the lack of any bi-racial children disturb these diversity-minded social engineers?

SPLC leaders are relentless in their venomous attacks on those who they claim try to "retreat from the government and press." On the SPLC "hate" list, there are dozens of little religious groups that do not subscribe to establishment religion. Some believe in their group's special "chosenness" by the Deity. They each wish to have the freedom to worship in accord with their beliefs. You know, exercising the kind of freedom that Americans possessed in an earlier time – even to living separately, if they so determined – before it became mandatory to stay in view of the government and the press.

Groups like the ADL and SPLC, however, refuse to leave such gatherings alone. Instead, these religious sects (some with only a handful of members) are added to "hate" lists and brought to the attention of the public. Members of such faiths are suspect, not for their peculiar doctrines, but because, according to the "watchdogs," no citizens should be allowed to operate on the outside or fringe of what is considered "mainstream" society. Outsiders who prefer to behave in such a manner are clearly not engaging in "inclusive" practices and, hence, could very well be haters of members of other groups and, therefore, "dangerous."

This is the heart of the SPLC philosophy that it conveys in its massive, annual fundraising mailings to thousands of subscribers, in which fearful scenarios are painted of a society ridden with racists, xenophobes, and potential domestic terrorists.

This month, black Professor Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, made the Southern Poverty Law Center's hit list. Deemed an "apologist for white supremacists" by SPLC's Mark Potok, Swain earned this ad hominem attack because she had dared to offer a favorable review of the documentary film, A Conversation About Race. [See my review here.]

The film, produced by Craig Bodeker, is focused on interviews with a diverse group of people of various ages and ethnic backgrounds. They each get to offer their opinions on the racism that they supposedly observe in the world around them. It is Bodeker's suspicion that genuine racism in today's America is a "myth." Many of the responses offered by the interviewees in this film inadvertently appear to confirm this suspicion. In spite of the SPLC's attempt to shame her, Professor Swain stands by her assertion that Bodeker's film would be useful in classrooms to stimulate honest discussions on the subject of race.

It is understandable why the SPLC does not want the Bodeker film, or anything like it, disseminated too widely. The results of the interviews, right from the mouths of ethnics themselves, suggest that blacks are not held back by a pernicious racism driven by white society.

For its purposes, the SPLC does not want America's race story shifted away from that of black victimology -- that is, the tale of blacks caught in a system that prevents them from improving their circumstances in a racist society. After all, where would that leave the SPLC and its ability to raise those millions of dollars annually in the name of "social injustice?"

If racism is not preventing a black person from going about his business, or living his daily life as he chooses, and places no life-threatening obstacles in his path, as in the days of a 1930s sharecropper, then what are we talking about?

Those who are familiar with the history of the SPLC know that this organization does not seek honesty. Like its other counterparts, it is determined to remain entrenched in its self-appointed role as caretaker and guardian of Americans' thoughts and social habits. Professor Swain is yet another target to have encountered the SPLC's tactic of character assassination. In the coming days we will learn to what extent it will follow through with its usual "link and smear" maneuvers and poisonous press releases. (Of course, as a vocal critic of open borders immigration policies, Swain could never win the approval of the SPLC.)

The FAIR guide cites several investigative articles that have been done on the SPLC. They include critical pieces in The Nation magazine, Harper's magazine, and the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser newspaper. Each describes how the SPLC skews, exaggerates and manipulates data to fit its biased perspectives on race, along with information about its questionable fundraising tactics.

As the FAIR guide suggests, an honest analysis of the immigration issue is possible if, after receiving press releases and other data from SPLC directors, journalists would feel obligated to test the accuracy of their information, question their motives, seek out responses to their allegations about other citizens and, most primary, distinguish between advocacy and news reporting.

Back in the mid-90's, I was in the (first) militia movement. Our "unit" consisted of 8 or 10 guys. We met in public with other like-minded groups, and the leaders of our various "units" also met openly with Phoenix, Maricopa County and federal LE organizations to:

a) express our concerns re. the decidedly unconstitutional tack our government had taken (esp. as re. our rights to own firearms, and esp. under POTUS Bill Klintoon);

b) make ourselves available to these LE agencies for any "grunt" work they might need done (e.g., desert search-and-rescue efforts); and

c) dispel any concerns they might have that we were secretive, potentially violent, anti-government, etc.

We dubbed our "unit" the First Mounted Rangers. The joke was, "Why are they 'mounted'?" A: Because we're too old to walk!

(You can read one reasonably open-minded piece on the AZ militia movement in none other than Phoenix's liberal alternative newsweekly, the New Times: "AFFIRMATIVE REACTIONARIES -- Arizona's militias aren't the exclusive domain of white supremacists - people of color are joining the ranks, too." I only mention the piece because the FMR were mentioned in that piece, because our leader's wife was of Mexican descent.)

THE WHOLE POINT BEING: Back in the day, the First Mounted Rangers of Maricopa County, AZ was actually listed on the SPLC's website as a "hate group"!

Thus, when the SPLC puts the words "hate" and "group" together, they have no more coherent meaning than the words "southern," "poverty" and "law" have when used in conjunction with the word "center."

Loss of the Issues & Views website

Due to the fact that the owners of the company that has hosted Issues & Views - The Website, since its creation in 1997, have decided to host only sites in Alaska, the website linked to this blog is probably lost.

Issues & Views - The Website (www.issues-views.com) contained hundreds of articles first printed in the hard copy Issues & Views newsletter (1983 through 2002), along with newer articles composed in the 1990s.

Although the former host has re-directed clicks to the website to this blog, it does not appear that there will be any rescue of the website's files or database. For this reason, surfers looking for issues-views.com are landing on this blog. (The website is currently being cached by Google.)

I have learned that an archived version of the website is available on Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, this last capture was performed in 2008, so it lacks certain minor deletions and editing done in 2009 and 2010. However, anyone searching for a particular article should be able to find it there.

- Elizabeth (issues@issues.cnc.net)

Racism is not "sin"

Over the years, as whites have worked to defend themselves against the charge of "racism," they have validated this slur by giving it greater importance than it deserves, and thereby helped to institutionalize it as the world's greatest "sin." As to genuine sin, harboring negative thoughts concerning some group is much further down the list of human deficiencies than bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and Hamburg, or hacking to death with machetes the men, women and children of an enemy tribe. Now, those are sins! Seeking to force "diversity" down the throats of an unreceptive segment of society is the religious mission of rabid, agenda-driven ideologues. None of this apparent concern for "social justice" has ever been about virtue. It's about power.

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Jacobs and Potter on the un-American nature of "hate crime" legislation.